Another reminder that it's not about the kids

It seems to me that we are continually having news accounts that focus on events harmful to children, and then those events fade until the next one angers us once again. And of course nothing gets done, and our children are once again mere pawns in a chess game of self-centered adults. We have seen this repeatedly happen in regard to school shootings, as well as street gang violence.

We should listen to Elvis Presley’s hit song, “In the Ghetto,” and then do something concrete about it.

Before we go far afield, let stay close to home — in fact in it.

For several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s an MSW therapist and I had a mediation service, and often co-mediated divorces. Over the years we noticed an unfortunate pattern as we tried to help couples with children come to terms with their new, separate lives and what was best for the children whom they were not divorcing. Although it was common to notice this behavior, one couple still stands out.

Through several sessions they never mentioned their two young children. Every time we would mention the children and asked how they were doing, they would steer the conversation back to themselves. Susan, my mediation partner, and I would then often roll our eyes, and after a while we couldn’t take it anymore and would offer some polite but very clear direction — which probably was the reason they didn’t come back. The two major reasons Susan and I stopped our mediation work was that we became convinced that virtually all the couples we counseled were most definitely going to make the same mistakes with future partners; and they were in fact “divorcing” their children, at least emotionally if not physically.

Once more as a nation we have had a proverbial shot across the bow about our neglect of children with the news over the past week concerning the separation of migrant kids from their parents.

While I regret that our national grandmother, Barbara Bush, is no longer able to weigh in on the subject, I was glad that Laura Bush did so. As noted in an article on CNN last Monday about her opinion piece in the Washington Post, she wrote, ‘I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.…” Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation…We pride ourselves on believing people should be seen the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance. If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents – and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.”

Of all the comments condemning the separation of kids from their parents, the one perhaps most telling was the phrase used by Pope Francis when he noted “… Creating psychosis is not the cure.”

“I’d like to say it’s un-American, but it’s happening right now in America. And it’s all of us, not just the Trump administration. This is on all of us.”

U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke

In my opinion, we need to look at ourselves first. I don’t know how deeply affected President Trump is from being shipped off at an early age to a strict boarding school, where apparently cruelty was the name of the game. However, I do know a little about this from personal experience that was likely nowhere near so traumatic, but still had its psychosis-creating potential – my grammar school in New Jersey. I don’t know whether that school could be characterized by using our Constitution’s 8th Amendment language prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishment,” but I can say that later in my life, my drill sergeant in Army basic training was, relatively speaking, a pussycat.

My sense is that both the President and many of his detractors continue to suffer from early wounds, and their venom often strikes out at those least capable of defending themselves. To me it’s about unexamined lives trying desperately to compensate for what they lack – a childhood full of safety, security and the warmth of love from parents.

Every now and then I do see a glimmer of hope from the media that claim to be journalists and politicians who claim to really be for the children. In a CNN article by Eli Watkins last Sunday, Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke seemed to get it right. He was quoted as saying, ‘I’d like to say it’s un-American, but it’s happening right now in America. And it’s all of us, not just the Trump administration. This is on all of us.’